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Sermon Transcript

Just about everyone wants to change in some way. Some want to change the amount of money they have, some want to change how they manage their time, some want to change their weight. Christians want to change to become more like Christ…but how can we change? If we get the goal right (conformity to Christ), can we achieve it using the world’s methods? One of our world’s common approaches is typified by a book that has been a top 10 on Amazon’s most sold and read list for over 300 weeks—Atomic Habits by James Clear. In it, Clear suggests that changing your habits can lead to the desired changes you wish to see in your life. A more common approach in the ancient world that still has plenty of adherents today is man-made religion—follow rules about what foods you can eat, observe certain holy days, and engage in certain rituals to connect with the divine–follow the rules, keep the calendar, perform the rituals, and you will change into something better. That’s the message the Colossians were hearing when Paul wrote them the letter on which we’re focusing today. So far Paul has combatted that message by showing the Colossians that they don’t need more than Christ; they need more of Christ. The question remains, though, because though we have Christ, we aren’t yet fully mature in Christ: how can we change? The basic answer of this passage is not to try to become something you are not or earn something that is not already yours through rules, habits, and rituals. The basic answer is to just be your(new)self. How can you do that? Seek your new home, kill your old desires, and put on your new clothes.

 

Seek your new home

 

Our passage begins by telling us that “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.” That Christians have been raised with Christ is something Paul has already asserted in Colossians—the basic idea is that when someone is united to Christ by faith, who they were by nature dies, and a new person comes to life, a new person whose life is animated by the risen Lord Jesus, and this is visibly displayed in baptism. You go into the water as one person, you then leave that person under the water, suffocated, and you come out a new person, breathing the breath of new life. It signifies a transfer from one realm to another: From what Paul called earlier in Colossians “the domain of darkness” to “the kingdom of God’s beloved Son”. The realm into which we are all born is the domain of darkness; it is characterized by sin and death, and evil forces rule over it. Doesn’t that sound like the world in which we live? But if you have been raised with Christ, it is as though you are now dead in the domain of darkness. When the people of that realm google your name, your obituary pops up. But when the people of the kingdom of God’s beloved Son google your name, your birth announcement pops up.

 

Of course, this is not true of every human alive today; don’t miss the important “if” at the beginning of our passage. Only those united to Christ by faith have been raised with Christ, though the offer of union with Christ is held out to you today if you will turn from your sins and receive and rest upon Christ alone for salvation. But if you have, then how should you live? Seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. The command is restated in verse 2: Set your mind on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. The new realm into which you were raised with Christ is now located above, in heaven. You are not spatially there yet, but in a very real sense, you are there, for, verse 3: You have died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. And the day is coming when that will be visible to all, for, verse 4: When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. Though Christ is now physically seated above, at God’s right hand, out of our sight, and though our lives are also hidden in him there, Christ will come again, in his visible resurrected body, and will raise our bodies from the dead to a new, glorious state, never to die again.

 

So if you have been born into this new heavenly realm, if you have been raised with Christ and one day will appear with him in glory, you have a new home, a new address, in heaven, though your life there is hidden, just as the risen Christ is now hidden from our sight, until the day that he appears, and we appear with him in glory. So until then we must press on to that heavenly home, and set our minds on the things that characterize it, rather than the things that characterize the domain of darkness. Imagine someone becomes a citizen of a new nation, renounces their citizenship in their native land, but continues living in their native land. What would they have to do? By faith, they would have to believe that their true citizenship is in their new nation, and therefore seek to get to it, and begin living as a citizen of it, even while still located bodily in their native land. They would have to adopt a whole new way of life from what they are used to, though they probably feel relatively comfortable in their native land, and the people they know and love with whom they grew up there are still speaking their native language and living according to their native customs. That’s something like what we’re being told here: If you really have been raised with Christ, who is seated in heaven, where you also are hidden with him, then seek to live a heavenly-oriented life now until Christ who is your life appears and you also appear with him in glory.

 

Notice the relationship, then, between your new identity, and how you now live. We aren’t told to seek the things that are above so that we’ll be raised with Christ in the end. We’re told to seek the things that are above because we have been raised with Christ. We aren’t even told to seek the things that are above so that when Christ appears, we also will appear with him in glory. Instead, we are simply assured that if we have been raised with Christ, then when he appears, we will appear with him in glory. The identity of our new self, united with Christ, is what should then dictate our actions.

 

In Atomic Habits, James Clear also explores this connection between identity and behavior. He says that there are three layers to behavior change: outcomes, habits, and identity. So say you want an outcome like, “Lose weight.” What many do, and what Clear critiques, is they then simply choose the habits that best accomplish that outcome—e.g., “Exercise daily,” “cut out all refined sugar,” “eat five servings of fruit and vegetables a day.” But he points out that then your habits will only be as good as your perception of your results—so you’re constantly checking the scale and on the days the number looks good, you’re motivated to persevere in your habits, but on the days it looks bad, your motivation to continue the habits wanes. Instead, he advocates forming a new identity that will then give rise to the habits that produce your outcomes. So instead of saying, “I’m going to lose 10 pounds,” say, “I’m the kind of person who exercises daily, even when it’s inconvenient to do so,” or “I’m the kind of person who orders a salad and a water, even when everyone I’m with is ordering a burger and a beer.”

 

I don’t have any unique bone to pick with James Clear or his book, but I reference it as a typical example of the popular approach today to how you can change. It’s actually similar in a way to what Paul was doing in Colossians 3 thousands of years earlier. Paul starts with your identity if you are in Christ: “You have been raised with Christ.” “You have died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.” “When Christ who is your life appears, you also will appear with him in glory.” But notice a few important differences. First, the popular approach works from outcomes to identity. You start with the outcome you want, then you choose an identity. In the Bible, though, God gives you a new identity, and that then directs your desired outcome: Since you have been raised with Christ (identity), seek the things that are above (outcome). Second and on a related note, in the popular approach, whichever comes first, both the outcomes and identities are something you choose, whereas here our identity and the outcome that should flow from it are something God assigns us. So if your desired outcome is something evil, like exterminating an ethnic group you hate, nothing in the popular approach prevents you from doing so, whereas in Colossians 3 obviously, since the identity is assigned to you by God, so the desired outcome comes with an ought: If you have been raised with Christ, you ought to live a heavenly-oriented life, which the rest of the passage will spell out in greater detail.

 

Choosing your own outcomes and identity is no doubt attractive, but not only does it provide no resistance to choosing evil outcomes; it also provides no resistance to choosing unsatisfying outcomes. You chose losing 10 pounds as an outcome because you thought it would make you happy, only to find that after losing 10 pounds, you still feel empty. And finally, chosen outcomes and a chosen identity leaves your identity more fragile. When you choose your own identity, you know deep down that it’s basically arbitrary—you chose it, after all. So how then will you really develop it into something more meaningful? Clear suggests you do so by getting little wins like going to the gym. “Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become,” he says. There’s no doubt an element of truth to that, but do you see what happens then? On the days you go to the gym, you have a secure identity, but then on the days you don’t, it’s not just a mistake you learn from and move on; it’s a vote against your very identity!

 

But here’s the beauty of identity in Christ: It’s real. The Colossians didn’t just arbitrarily choose to tell themselves, “I’m the kind of person who is risen with Christ”—rather, they really were risen with Christ! If you are in Christ, you have been too, and that is just as true of you on your bad days as on your good days. With that secure identity assigned to us by God, we are also assigned an outcome that is not only good, but satisfying: To seek our new home, the heavenly reality for which our souls were created, under the good and loving authority of Christ. If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above. Set your mind on things above, not things on earth, for heaven is your true home, and your life is already hidden there with Christ.

 

On what is your mind set? What takes center stage in your thoughts? Is it heaven and Christ who is seated there, or is it something on earth? The false teachers who were influencing the Colossians had their minds set on things on earth: Regulations about not tasting, touching, or handling certain created things, festivals, new moons, Sabbaths. So many today have their minds set on losing 10 pounds, taking a vacation, or hitting their next financial goal—not inherently evil things, but things that threaten to distract our vision from our heavenly home. I know recently my mind was set on buying a minivan, and we did so last week. After I got it home, I found it was all I could think about. Even as I was studying the Bible, I was thinking about the features and how I couldn’t wait to drive it again. By all means, laugh at me; it’s ridiculous that someone whose home is in heaven could get so consumed with something that is on the earth. What’s happening when that happens to you? You’re forgetting who you really are. You have what Paul Tripp calls “identity amnesia.” Look at even the best things on earth and say about them, “This ain’t it.” If you have been raised with Christ, your life is now hidden with him in heaven. That’s your true home. Seek it.

 

Ok, but still, what does that look like? First, it looks like killing your old desires.

 

Kill your old desires

 

Verse 5 says to put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you. Though you have been raised with Christ to the heavenly realm, there are still some earthly things in you that need to be put to death. When someone becomes a citizen of a new nation, they will find there are still customs, ways of living or speaking, habits even, from their native land, that need to be put to death. So also with you, though you have died in the domain of darkness, your dark desires aren’t all dead yet. You have work to do, and your work is first to kill them. We get a list of what these are as verse 5 continues: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. Sexual immorality is the big heading, and the rest of the items in the list are all related to it, though some extend beyond it. Sexual immorality is the best attempt of English translators to translate a term that refers to any sexual activity outside the covenant of marriage. The first term in the list, then, refers to an action, while the list then progresses to the most internal beginning of that action: Covetousness, which is idolatry.

 

In the Ten Commandments that God gave to summarize his will for Israel before the coming of Christ, covetousness was forbidden in the Tenth Commandment. To covet is to desire something that cannot be yours, and one of the prime examples given in the ten commandments is to covet your neighbor’s wife. The word is sometimes also translated greed, which naturally conjures up the image of money, but what is sexual immorality driven by if not a greed for sexual pleasure, a greed that refuses to be content with abstinence in singleness or chastity in marriage? Interestingly, verse 5 tells us that such covetousness is idolatry, the sin forbidden in the first commandment, in which God tells us that we should have no other gods before him. What’s the connection? When you want something so much that you demand to have it even when it cannot be yours, what does that reveal? It reveals that that thing has taken the place of God in your heart. You have set your mind on it above him, such that when there is a conflict between getting it and obeying him, you will disobey him to get it. That is idolatry.

 

Sometimes people think of sexual sin as a small thing, a guilty pleasure, able to be enjoyed in moderation by those who live an otherwise good life. Even Dante, the medieval poet, has sexual sinners in a relatively minor circle of hell. But God sees sexual sin as idolatry, and we read in verse 6 that it is on account of these things that the wrath of God is coming. That’s how seriously he takes it. Do you take it that seriously in your life? If someone were to see the steps you were taking to fight it, would they conclude that you took it seriously? Are you happy to linger on tempting images when they pop up as you’re scrolling? Are you intentionally viewing sexually explicit material? Are you engaging in sexual activity with someone to whom you are not married? Are you entertaining fantasies of such things? On account of these things the wrath of God is coming. And the person who sets their mind on these things is just not who you are anymore!

 

Look at verse 7: In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. To live in them is to engage in them as part of your lifestyle. It’s not to fight them. That’s how those in the domain of darkness handle sexual immorality, impurity, evil desire, and covetousness: They just do it. They may hide it for fear of consequences, but they want it. First, then, a warning: If you are here today and sexual sin is just part of your life that you are not fighting, you should not assume that you have been raised with Christ. But those of you who have been raised with Christ may still find desires for sexual sin in you that sometimes even lead to sinful actions. We are tempted, tried, and sometimes failing, so if that’s you, it doesn’t mean you aren’t risen with Christ. But it does mean you aren’t being your(new)self when you engage in it. You’re forgetting who you are once again. You are the kind of person who doesn’t look at pornography, you are the kind of person who doesn’t entertain fantasies, you are the kind of person who doesn’t linger on sexually charged images, not because it “works” to tell yourself that, but because you have been risen with Christ.

 

Not only did Jesus never commit sexual immorality, he never even wanted it! He was not covetous, or idolatrous, or engaged in evil desire, and the transformation he is working in your life is aimed no lower. That’s why we’re told not just to put to death the action, but the desire that lies behind the action! Popular self-help techniques can get you to stop looking at pornography, but that isn’t all God is after. He’s after a total transformation of your heart, so that even evil desires are put to death. In conversations about sexual sin sometimes well-meaning people will say, “The desire isn’t bad; but you must not act on it”; the Bible never does that. We put to death not only acts of sexual immorality, but the desires for it. We don’t put to death all desire; there are good desires, but evil desires are just that: Evil, and we must kill them. They’re the desires of our old, evil self, not of our new self.

 

So now we must, in the words of verse 8, put them all away, and then we get another list of what is earthly: Wrath, malice, slander, obscene talk, and then lying in verse 9. Wrath is appropriate to God because he is perfectly just, and all his wrath is perfectly directed and measured against what is truly evil, but we must put it away from us, for we are not the divine judge. Our anger is typically not against what is truly evil, but against what hurts or bothers us, and even on the rare occasion when our anger is against genuine evil, it is typically distorted by a false sense of superiority, and runs out of control to excessive and unjust retribution against the evildoer. Even when we stop short of physical violence, our sinful wrath comes out as slander, tarnishing another’s name by how we speak about them, lying to bolster our pride and damage the reputation of another.

 

And again, these sorts of things are just not consistent with who we now are in Christ. Look at the rest of verse 9: We don’t lie to one another because we have put off the old self with its practices, and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. The old self got angry at others for slighting us. The old self lied to look better and protect himself. The old self tore down the name of others to build up his own. The old self harbored resentment against others as though he were their judge, jury and executioner. But you have put off the old self, with its practices, and have put on the new self, remade in Christ, and now in the process of being remade in knowledge after the image of its creator. Don’t fight against that. Don’t resist it. As God works in you to remake you, kill your old desires with the strength that he supplies.

 

And what is one of the main reasons for wrath and anger and malice among us? It’s our differences. Racism is so stigmatized in 2025 Philadelphia that I don’t meet many people at these gatherings who want to be racist—if anything, I meet white people who are afraid of being called racist, and I meet people of color who are afraid of being victims of racism. That’s kinda the hand our world has dealt us, and if we just play it, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: The white people keep their distance because they’re afraid of being called racist, the people of color then feel racially excluded, and keep their distance for fear of being the victims of racism. But in Christ, in the new self we are, verse 11 tells us that there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, Barbarian, Scythian, slave, free, but Christ is all, and in all. This verse is not advocating color-blindness or willful ignorance to the ways one ethnic group has sinned against another, but it is saying these earthly identities of our ethnicity or even our social status (slave or free) are subordinate to our new self identity in Christ, an identity shared by barbarian, Scythian, slave, free, Jew, Gentile, black, white, male, female, rich, poor, and so on. And why? Because in this new realm we’ve been raised into, Christ is all, and in all.

 

I am not all, so I don’t have to protect myself. I am not all, so I don’t have to be easily offended. I am not all, so I don’t have to use rage and malice to get my way. I am not all, so I don’t have to insist on the norms of my native culture. Christ is all. Your new self and my new self have been made one new self in him, that is all about him. So kill your old desires for earthly things, evil desires, earthly glory, earthly vindication, and next, put on your new clothes.

 

Put on your new clothes

 

if we are not most fundamentally Jew, Gentile, barbarian, Scythian, slave, or free, who are we now? Verse 12 says we are God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved. If you are a Christian, it’s because you chose to trust Christ for salvation, but if you chose to trust Christ for salvation, it can only be because God first chose you. That’s why verse 12 calls us God’s chosen ones. It also calls us holy, which means we have been set apart from the world for exclusive devotion to God, like common bread was set apart for use in the temple before Christ came. It was thus made holy, and in a far greater way, God has set us apart for devotion to him. So we are called holy. And in choosing us and making us holy, God has demonstrated his great love for us. So we are called his beloved. Do you think of yourself this way? What about your fellow church members? Do you recognize that you are chosen, holy, and beloved, and do you recognize that they are as well, however different from you they may be in the world?

 

Well as we have already died in Christ, but still have to put to death what is earthly in us, so here, though we have already put on the new self, we have to put on the heart attitudes that are consistent with that new self. We have to be our new selves. That looks like putting on compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. These are of course the opposite of wrath, malice, slander, and the other items we saw listed that characterized who we used to be. And why would these be our new clothing? We get a hint at the end of verse 13, where we read that we forgive one another as the Lord has forgiven us. Compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience are our new clothing because they are descriptions of the Lord Jesus. When he described his heart, he described it as gentle and lowly (Matt 11:28). When he saw the harassed and helpless crowds, he had compassion on them (Matt 9:35-38). Though he is the holy God we’d sinned against, with all the power and right to pour out his wrath on us, he came to us meekly, humbly, to the point of even dying on a shameful cross to pay for our sins, so that we could be forgiven and restored to new life with him, the life to which he rose when he rose from the dead.

 

If we have been raised with him, if we have been such beneficiaries of his compassion, how can we close our hearts to compassion? The rubber meets the road on these heart postures when we have to bear with one another, and when we have a complaint against another. In our church covenant we commit to bear with one another’s weaknesses and forgive one another’s sins. Sometimes we have a complaint against another because we are easily offended, or because someone has violated our standards, not God’s standards. We don’t need to bear with or forgive such things; we need to repent of our proud, harsh spirit that wants to hold others to our standards, and put on humility and meekness. But sometimes people really do fall short. They don’t love us as they should have. What do we do then? We bear with their weakness, recognizing just how much God bears with our weakness daily, and how much others have to as well. Sometimes people more actively sin against us. What do we do then? We forgive them, as the Lord has forgiven us. Forgiveness is not optional for we who have been forgiven so much. Often that means we genuinely overlook the offense and say nothing; sometimes it means we also confront the offender with humility, meekness, and compassion.

 

But there is one piece of clothing that ties all these other pieces together—love. Above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony, verse 14 says. Kindness, humility, patience, compassion, bearing with one another, forgiveness…It can feel like a long list. But the list is really only one item long: Love. That’s the central, defining virtue of a heavenly-oriented life. That’s what someone seeking the things above puts on. The false teachers were saying you needed to follow certain food laws and get the rituals right, and that’s what most man-made religion says is the path to the things above, but Christianity says that because you’re already alive above, you’re free to focus on love. Love is that affection whereby one is dear to another. My children are dear to me, so I bear with them, I forgive them, I have compassion on them. That comes naturally to most parents, but this is saying that in the new self who we are in Christ, we can put that kind of love on toward even the barbarian, the Scythian, the slave, and the free, the people whose culture is different from ours, the people who hurt us, the people who let us down, the people who sin against us.

 

How can we do that? First, let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. Jesus is our peace; in him we have peace with God and peace with one another, because it is in him that our sins have been forgiven. God has no enmity toward us in Christ. And in him, we have been united, and made one. There are not multiple Christs. There is one Christ, perfectly at peace, and so let that peace rule your heart. Relate to God and relate to one another as those who have peace in Jesus Christ.

 

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, and let the word of Christ dwell richly in you. We’ve seen this word called the word of truth and the word of God earlier in Colossians, but here it is called the word of Christ because Christ is the center of this word. The gospel is the good news concerning Christ. It is the message through which we were saved, but as we have seen throughout Colossians, it is the message we must continue hearing if we are to grow to maturity. This is the basic habit that leads to the outcome of love for those whose identity is in Christ: Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. As you keep hearing it, understanding, and believing it, God uses it to change not just your habits or your outcomes, but your heart, from one filled with evil desires, to one filled with love.

 

Still wondering what that actually looks like? The verse goes on to tell us that the way the word of Christ will dwell richly in us is as we teach and admonish one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. The word of Christ will not dwell richly in your if you only take it in through private Bible reading. You need others who will teach it to you and admonish or warn you against straying from it, and you need to teach it to others and warn them against straying from it. It’s interesting that the two words here for teach and admonish are the same ones Paul used to describe his own ministry back in chapter 1: he said it was his aim as an apostle to present everyone mature in Christ, and that he did so by teaching and admonishing them. That kinda made it look like teaching and admonishing was the work of the apostles, or maybe of pastors, and it is. But the intention of that teaching and admonishment from the apostles and pastors is not that it get to you and stop with you. The idea is that it flows through you to one another, so that each member of the church is also teaching and admonishing others, and being taught and admonished by others.

 

If you feel like the word of Christ isn’t dwelling very richly in you, could it be that this discipline is lacking in your life? Are you listening attentively to the preaching of the word of Christ in your local church? Are you even there enough to do so? Do you see it as part of your job as a Christian to teach and admonish other Christians with that word? You say, “I’m not very good at that”—then seek to get better! Seek to learn the word of Christ well enough that you can teach it to others and warn them when they are straying from it, and what is that likely to do in you? It is likely to lead that word to dwell more richly in you. And what if next time you’re struggling, instead of distracting yourself or even only turning to a book or a therapist, you called a brother or sister in Christ and asked them to speak the word of Christ to you? I think of brothers and sisters I know here who have set up times to talk on the phone to simply pray for one another—what are they doing there? They’re praying the word of Christ into one another’s hearts.

 

But the way this passage specifically mentions that we teach or admonish one another so that the word of Christ will dwell more richly in us is as we sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. Did you know that’s a big part of why we sing when we gather for worship? We sing to teach one another the word of Christ more deeply. We are thankful to have some skilled musicians leading us in that, but it is all of our responsibility to teach one another the word through our songs. Imagine a teacher standing in front of a class who wants her students to really learn. What will she do? She’ll speak clearly enough that they can understand her words. She’ll speak loudly enough that they can hear her. She’ll be careful to make sure the things she says are actually true, so that they learn truth. That’s how you should approach singing in church. You are one of the teachers, even as you are also one of the students. So sing clearly enough that others can understand what you are singing. Sing loudly enough so that others can hear you! Try to out-sing the speakers. If you are a member of this church, you are on the worship team. It’s not practical for every individual to choose the songs, but we as elders choose the songs we do not most fundamentally because we like the tune or because we think it will produce a certain emotional experience in the hearers. We choose them more so because we think they teach the word of Christ well, and as all songs program their lyrics into our minds, we want the word of Christ programmed into our minds.

 

And finally, whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. There’s a lot packed into these seventeen verses; we’ve only flown over them. But there is also a blessed simplicity to them, and to the Christian life. Seek your heavenly home. Put on love. And whatever you do, whether it’s your sexuality, your anger, how you relate to people of other ethnicities, how you forgive, how you sing, whatever you do, do it in the name of the Lord Jesus. If Christ is all, and in all, let him be all in all that you do. And whatever you do, do it with a profound sense of gratitude toward God. What grace from God, that we who were living in sin have not only not been condemned, but we’ve been made alive, are being remade in knowledge after the image of our creator, and one will day will be made glorious. Don’t let false teachers and fads complicate this for you. Don’t set your mind on earthly life-optimization and go looking for the perfect set of rules, rituals, and habits that will really take you to the next level. Just be your new self.